Anna Kendrick shares the “strange” emotional toll of the Alice, Darling press tour

Having a decades-long career, actor Anna Kendrick has experienced her share of promotional tours for the films she’s been in. Yet, with her most recent psychological thriller Alice, Darling, the Pitch Perfect star has revealed that her own emotional ties to the film have made the press junket situations “trickier to navigate” than ever before.

In Alice, Darling, Kendrick plays Alice, a woman coming to terms with the emotionally abusive relationship she’s been in while away on a trip with her two friends (played by Kaniehtiio Horn and Wunmi Mosaku). Kendrick, who is also an executive producer on the project, told People back in September how her own “personal experience with emotional abuse and psychological abuse” furthered her connection to the film, leading to Alice, Darling’s press tour centered around the actor’s personal life in relation to the movie.

With the film heading to theaters this Friday, Kendrick candidly spoke with IndieWire about the challenges she faced on the Alice Darling promotional tour, especially in relation to her own past of abuse.

“People have asked me, ‘Was it challenging to shoot the movie?’ and I guess that question makes sense,” said the Oscar-nominated actor. “But I’m actually finding that the press is the thing that has been a little trickier to navigate, making sure that I’m OK and feeling safe in my body.”

Highlighting one specific situation of multiple, fast-paced interviews, Kendrick described feeling “shitty” at the end of the day and making a decision to not continue that type of press junkets for the rest of the promotional tour.

“There was a thing early on where I was doing like a junket-style day for Alice, Darling where it’s like six minutes per person and you kind of run through like 30 interviews really quickly, and I went home and was in the shower and was like, ‘Why do I feel so shitty right now?’” Kendrick said. “And I sort of told everyone, ‘I don’t think I can do another thing like that.’”

She added, “I totally get it’s no journalist’s job to show up for me in the same headspace that I’m in, but I’m trying really hard to go into these conversations really open and it feels kind of strange to be talking to somebody who clearly just has a million things to do that day… I was like, ‘Oh, I need to draw a boundary there. I can’t really be talking about this in that style of conversation.’”

While the Up In The Air star confessed that she hadn’t meant to bring up her past experiences with abuse in the People interview, the situation made her “glad the Band-Aid got ripped off.”

Kendrick’s next role will be as game-show contestant Cheryl Bradshaw in The Dating Game, which will also be the actor’s directorial debut. Based on the real story of 1970s serial killer Rodney Alcala and his appearance on the reality dating show The Dating Game, the film will also star Tony Hale, Kathryn Gallagher, and Max Lloyd-Jones.